


Shell Shock

by Leopardmask



Series: Glitch AU: What Goes Around Comes Around [5]
Category: Hermitcraft
Genre: Glitch!AU, Glitches, Mycelium Resistance, Transformation, Turf War, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:42:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29810670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leopardmask/pseuds/Leopardmask
Summary: Nobody’s perfect, even those who created the worlds. There are always flaws in the Great Code. Usually, they’re avoided, or ignored, and when the next update comes, those flaws are gone. Some, though, are exploited for Player benefit.With the most recent update, something about working with these glitches has changed. Work with them too long... and the world will start glitching you.Grian has a lot of fun with his secrets and games. But sometimes, keeping even the most harmless-seeming of secrets can make problems arise.
Series: Glitch AU: What Goes Around Comes Around [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2042692
Comments: 9
Kudos: 57





	Shell Shock

**Author's Note:**

> This is part **five** of the glitch AU! If you missed part 4, I apologize, I forgot to advertise that my friend Cat would be writing that one. Part 4 is [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29268006)

"Alright, come with me," Etho instructed, after triple-checking that they weren't being watched.

Grian admired the man's smooth, focused movements as the two of them crept through the shopping district. Etho stopped him at the potion shop. "Here. Check this out."

Etho indicated a shulker box embedded in the ground under a low branch. Grian opened it and frowned. "An out-of-stock shulker?"

"A-ha, see, that's what we want  _ them _ to think," Etho explained. "Blends right in, doesn't it?"

"Oh, clever. Is it like a keycard entry?" Grian guessed.

Etho shook his head, a grin shifting the corners of his mask. "Keys are too easy to compromise, especially if we get killed by HEP and they find a key in our stuff. This is something Tango and I discovered, but I don't think Tango ever expected anyone to actually use it. Just stand on top of the shulker box for me?" 

"Oookay," Grian obliged.

Etho spun the box lid open. Grian yelped in surprise, throwing his arms up to defend against the low branch above, and half stepped, half stumbled off the box. "Was that supposed to try and squish me??"

Etho let the lid fall. "What, you don't trust my ideas?"

"Not particularly," Grian grumped.

"Well, that's understandable," Etho laughed. "But I promise, this is something cool. Just stand on the shulker and pretend there's nothing at all above you. You can put your hand up to protect your face, but don't bend your knees or duck away or anything like that. Trust me, trust the box."

Grian sighed and stood back on the box. Etho activated its opening again. For an instant, the shulker box started to press Grian up against the branch.

Then, he phased  _ through _ the box. Grian gasped at the absolutely bizarre sensation of the shulker box suddenly being at once all around him, inside his body, and somehow a  _ part _ of him, as he fell past-through-under.

He landed on the cushion of honey blocks below and tumbled over, quite shaken. Etho followed, landing on his feet with one knee and one hand on the ground to take the impact.

"You good?" Etho asked, holding out his hand. "Sorry - first time it happens can be kinda jarring."

"Yeah, I..." Grian pulled himself up. "I actually feel just fine, now. That was certainly an  _ experience, _ though."

"It's kinda crazy," Etho agreed. "It is a good secret, though, don't you think?"

"It is that." Grian frowned and rubbed at the back of one hand with his thumb.

"Did you hurt yourself?" Etho questioned.

"No, no." Grian showed Etho a small patch of bright pink on his hand. The edges of the pink seemed to flicker against his skin. "I guess going through the box made some of the dye rub off on me."

\-----

“Alright,” Grian clapped, bringing the meeting to order. “Looks like we’re all present - except Impulse, but he told me he’d be working on the decoy base today. First off, does anyone have anything to report?”

A few hands raised. Grian called on xB first.

“I talked to Keralis,” xB reported, “tried to get him on our side without giving too much away. But he’s pretty firmly on HEP’s side. Also, you, uh,” xB pointed at his cheek, “you’ve got a little something on your face there, G.”

Grian sighed and checked himself in the front camera of his communicator. “Yeah, the dye kinda comes off the shulker box up top whenever you go through, sorry about that.”

“Does it though?” xB questioned. “We all came through that way, but you’re the only one with pink on your face.”

\-----

Etho heard something crash through the leaves hanging above his base. He quickly trotted over to investigate, finding Grian stumbling to a barely-balanced landing. “Oh hey, Grian? What are you doing here?”

Grian fidgeted with the straps of his elytra, as if they were bothering him, then wrapped his arms around himself. “S-something’s wrong.”

“Uh-oh,” Etho observed. “What is it? And why’d you crash here?”

“I didn’t really know where else to go,” Grian admitted, now tugging at a sleeve of his sweater. Etho noticed curiously that something about how the garment fit Grian seemed off. “When I noticed I kind of panicked.”

Grian pushed his sleeve up, revealing that one side of his arm was covered in a hard magenta plate. Each hand had its own patch of the stuff on the back, and the pink on his cheekbones was hardening too.

“Whoa,” Etho breathed. “That’s... oh, dang, that’s not from the base entrance, is it?”

“I can’t think of anything else it could be,” Grian said. “I’ve been in and out of there a lot today, building some of the new areas, and then it got too hot and I rolled up my sleeves and saw  _ this. _ I think there’s some on my back, too, it feels weird when I move.” The connection clicked. “Oh, no, I’m glitched, aren’t I?”

Etho nodded. “Yup. I should have realized, honestly; it seemed like such a minor thing... but then again, so’s the stuff Doc’s been messing with, and-”

“Doc?” Grian interrupted.

“Oh,” Etho backpedaled. “Right, I don’t think I was supposed to mention that. Anyway, it looks like you intersecting with the shulker shell so many times is giving you a similar kind of shell.”

“Why me?” Grian complained. “Or, why  _ just _ me? Why not you, and xB, and Ren, and- well, I can guess why not Impulse. We’ve all been using the glitch, though, yet I’m the only one affected, I think.”

“Maybe you were the first, so it, like, latched on to you?” Etho speculated. “I don’t know. You’d have to ask Xisuma about it.”

“Please don’t tell X,” Grian blurted. At Etho’s raised eyebrow, Grian elaborated. “He’s HEP! We can’t just go telling him Resistance secrets. Even if I don’t  _ say _ it’s related, one of them would guess, and then we’d be rumbled, wouldn’t we?”

Etho sighed. “I guess so, yeah. They’re going to find out eventually, you know that, right? Especially if your condition gets any worse.”

\-----

Grian’s condition did get worse, over the coming days. He insisted that he felt fine otherwise, he was just weirded out. The shell segments on his back, arms, and hands grew each time he entered the Resistance base, but he couldn’t just  _ not _ perform necessary Resistance business, could he? Shell bits also appeared on his shins and the back of his head. Grian discovered that the plates were arranged in just the right way to fit together and completely protect him like an egg if he curled up with his arms and legs in front of himself.

He kept his sweater on at all times when in public spaces, which wasn’t unusual or suspicious for him, but it was starting to get uncomfortably tight. One day, he had been about to decide he was safe to take his sweater off when Cub flew over, leaving Grian to dart back under the cover of trees instead. He also tried to keep his elytra on to avoid suspicion, even though it sat oddly against his shell.

Another time, he had been working diligently in the base, when Impulse dropped in. “Hey G,” he called casually.

Grian turned and smiled, just as casually. But his smile quickly turned to discomfort as a strange lump formed in his throat. When he coughed, something flew out of his mouth. Both hermits stared in surprise as the object, rather than falling to the ground, meandered across the room and finally popped against Impulse’s chest. Surprise turned to shock as Impulse started to float off the ground.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Impulse flailed his arms and legs, trying to control his movement, unused to being so light that a single swing sent him spinning in the air. “Oh geez-”

Grian started to step forward, then stopped, clasping his hands together nervously as Impulse’s upward motion slowed near the ceiling. Impulse just managed to twist onto his back before he crashed down with a  _ thud. _

Grian rushed over to help, but Impulse was already getting up. "Dude, are you okay?" Grian asked. "That looked like a bad fall."

"Don't worry about it, I'm fine," Impulse assured, rapping on his chest. "Solid rock, remember? It's actually less likely I'll get hurt if I land on my back or chest than, say, if I tried to land on my feet or do a roll or something."

Grian knocked on Impulse's chest curiously. "Wow, you are actually solid, aren't you? I kinda thought... well, I don't know, really."

Impulse chuckled at that. "How are you doing with your glitch, by the way? Still feeling weird about it, I'm sure?"

"Oh, for sure," Grian sighed. He stretched, wincing as he felt another thread or two break in his sweater. "I feel like a turtle, scuttling around with a big ol' shell on my back. And the floating bullets are new and weird, I've certainly never experienced that before. Quite frankly, I don't like this one bit."

Impulse nodded in sympathy. "Honestly, I'm kind of still adjusting to the extra mass I've got, right? Although mine didn't really change my... my  _ shape _ at all. If I cover all the grey bits up I still look the same. But it definitely feels different."

"It's also, like..." Grian hesitated. "Why did this stupid glitch only choose me? None of the rest of the Resistance are turning pink or spitting shulker bullets at each other. Obviously I wouldn't wish this on anyone, but I also hate being the only one."

"Ohh, yeah, I get that," Impulse replied. "Well, remember, even though you are our only shulker guy, you're not the only glitched hermit around. Me, Zed, Mumbo, Cub - you aren't alone here."

\-----

Somehow, Grian kept his secret... until the raid came.

A hole exploded in the ceiling, revealing Mumbo, straddling the nose of the TNT miner, swinging his legs and looking entirely too pleased with the TNT blowing up harmlessly in his face.

Grian backed away, swallowing the object rising in his throat. He let out a tiny burp as it dissolved; immediately, he felt another one behind it.

_ What am I doing?  _ his panicked mind finally realized.  _ HEP is here! If there was ever a time to- _

He let the next bullet fly. And the next, and the next. As he ran, he saw in the corner of his eye Scar yelp and start rising off the ground. Without hesitation, Grian slammed the emergency button.

\-----

"So this has been progressing ever since you started using a shulker box as a secret entrance?" Xisuma asked behind him.

"Yeah, I guess it's been a few weeks now." Grian held his arms protectively over his bare chest, shell plates facing outward, as Xisuma inspected the shell on his back.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Etho offered from one corner of the room.

"Well, this is very similar composition to purpur, just like a real shulker's shell," Xisuma confirmed, running his hand lightly across it. Grian shivered.

"Oh, so you  _ can _ feel that, interesting."

"Yeah, just a little," Grian nodded. "I maybe should have mentioned it sooner, but..."

"Well, I do get why you didn't," Xisuma replied. "But, and I'm not just saying this as a member of HEP, I think it's a good job that Scar and Mumbo found you all when they did. We really don't know much about what's happening; who knows how far this might have progressed if you'd kept using that box?"

Grian swallowed a bullet that threatened to escape. They had started forming whenever he got nervous. "It's... still not reversible, is it?"

Xisuma shook his head. "Not yet. We can only hope that it's known, and will be fixed and reverted when the next Update reaches us. I'm sorry."

"Speaking of secrets," Etho suddenly interrupted, looking up from his communicator, "Doc, uh, might need some admin help right about now. He won't admit it to you directly, of course, but he just messaged me about a, uh, problem. And actually..." He gave them a thoughtful look. "I think Grian might be able to help too. What do you say, G?"

"Uh, sure?" Grian tentatively agreed. "Can I first try and find a way to wear a shirt that doesn't make me look like a buffoon?"


End file.
